Florida rescue workers ended their efforts on Saturday to recover the body of a man who disappeared into a sinkhole that swallowed his bedroom while he slept and will demolish the suburban Tampa home due to its dangerous conditions, a rescue spokeswoman said.
Two nearby houses have been evacuated because the sinkhole has weakened the ground under them and their residents will probably never be allowed inside again, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico said.
Jeff Bush, a 36-year-old landscaper, is presumed dead after vanishing into the sinkhole that opened suddenly beneath his room on Thursday night. Five other people in the house were getting ready for bed when they heard a loud crash and Jeff screaming.
Jeff’s brother had to be rescued after jumping into the hole and furiously digging to find him.
Authorities used listening devices and cameras at the scene of the 9m wide hole in the ground, but detected no signs of life.
“There’s nothing compatible with life in this situation,” Damico said. “There’s no way of possible survival.”
She said the demolition of the home was to begin yesterday.
“Our data has come back and there is absolutely no way we can do any kind of recovery without endangering lives of workers,” she said.
Jeff Bush’s brother, 35-year-old Jeremy Bush, feared earlier on Saturday that his brother was lost forever. A memorial of balloons and flowers for Jeff Bush was formed near the home that same day.
“I thank the Lord for not taking my daughter and the rest of my family,” said Jeremy, who worked with his brother in landscaping.
Jeremy himself was rescued from the sinkhole by the first responder to the emergency call, Douglas Duvall of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. When Duvall entered Jeff Bush’s bedroom, he saw a widening chasm, but no sign of Jeff.
“The hole took the entire bedroom,” Duvall said. “You could see the bedframe, the dresser, everything was sinking.”
Norman Wicker, 48, the father of Jeremy’s fiance who also lived in the house, said: “It sounded like a car ran into the back of the house.”
Damico said the hole would be stabilized after the house is demolished to ensure the safety of the surrounding area. However, the residents of two neighboring homes who were forced to evacuate are unlikely to return, she added.
Soil samples showed the sinkhole had compromised the ground beneath the homes, engineers and safety officials said on Saturday.
The residents of those houses were allowed 20 minutes to 30 minutes in their homes on Saturday to gather belongings. Firefighters and residents formed an assembly line to move items out of the houses and into SUVs and trucks.
“They’ll most likely never be allowed back in their houses,” Damico said.
Before demolishing the home where Jeff Bush lived, workers would try to move part of it to a safe space on the sidewalk to let family members retrieve some heirlooms and personal belongings yesterday, she said.
The risk of sinkholes is common in Florida due to the state’s porous geological bedrock, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection said.
As rainwater filters down into the ground, it dissolves the rock, causing erosion that can lead to underground caverns, which cause sinkholes when they collapse.
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needs to control the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons. Trump last month backed off his threats to seize Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater US influence. A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss ways to meet Washington’s security concerns
RSS